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About The IGF

IndieGames.com is presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference. The company (producer of the Game Developers Conference series, Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.

A new game developer focused survey by Daniel Fedor, a former BioWare producer and now full-time indie, has been looking into the reasons why devs decided to go indie, as well as why devs would choose not to go indie. The results were posted on sister site Gamasutra, and prove rather interesting.

Of reasons to become an indie dev over working for a AAA company, 73 percent of those surveyed cited "creative freedom", while 58 percent said it was down to "sharing one's ideas with the world". 49 percent said being an indie dev was good for the "improved working hours." 47 percent also said it was due to "the chance to earn more than a salary and/or benefits", although it is questionable exactly what this means - indeed, a couple of commenters on Gama have left notes to this effect.

Now onto the cons of going indie. 54 percent of participants cited "inability to go without pay long enough to ship a game", while "lack of business acumen" was noted by 37 percent of those surveyed. Other reasons cited included "family depends on income", "liking coworkers" and "liking current project."

This is just a basic break-down of what the survey found - it's worth checking it out in full if you're interested. It's also worth noting that 121 people took part in total, and 56 percent of those were devs who are considering becoming indie, while only 27 percent were actually indie. Read the full survey at Gamasutra. You can also see the results directly here.